News first broke of the Cubs getting close to a deal with veteran outfielder Steven Souza Jr. late last week, but the two sides just now agreed to a contract on Tuesday night.
Souza, 30, missed all of 2019 because of a torn ACL with the Diamondbacks has signed a one-year deal with the Cubs. The contract has several bonuses, both for just staying on the roster throughout the season and for number of plate appearances that Souza gets in 2020.
Souza will have a $1 million base salary and will have the opportunity to make up to $2 million more in incentives.
Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times has the breakdown of those incentives for Souza.
Souza has only played in five MLB seasons, making his debut in 2014 with the Nationals. However, he’s only had three full seasons all with the Rays from 2015-17. In 2018, his first year with the Diamondbacks, Souza was limited to 72 games as he was sidelined multiple times because of a strained pec muscle. And of course there was the lost 2019 season, when he suffered the season-ending knee injury during the final week of spring training.
Terrible timing for Souza with all the injuries considering he was just coming off the best year of his career in 2017. He had an .810 OPS with the Rays that season, smashing 30 home runs in 148 games.
At the stage of his career and with the question marks surrounding his return from all the injuries, Cubs fans shouldn’t be expecting him to be the starting right fielder, but it is nice to see that from the start the front office is most likely going to platoon Jason Heyward with Souza.
The Cubs’ outfielders have been pretty brutal against left-handed pitching and at least Souza has been above average against them in his career.
All you can hope for at this point and going forward is that the coaching staff puts guys in the best position to succeed. I hope that means we do see a platoon in right field from the very beginning of the season and Souza obviously helps with that if he stays healthy.
